Course | Description |
|---|
AHI 103 Creative Moments in Art History | This introductory course provides a selective survey of periods in the history of Western art that presents a narrative of its development over time, acknowledges the relation to this narrative of major artists and their media, and clarifies the transcultural influences that account for changing perceptions in the imaginative recreation of experience; the techniques created to accommodate those perceptions; and the dynamics of audience reception. This course fulfills the Humanities General Education requirement. |
AHI 320 The Art of the Renaissance in Italy | This Core II course examines the remarkable revitalization of the visual arts in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy. While considering antecedents to that outburst of activity, the course will focus on painting, sculpture, and architecture from 1400 to 1550, especially the period 1495-1512 which saw the creation of da Vinci’s Last Supper and Mona Lisa; Raphael’s School of Athens; and Michelangelo’s Pieta, David, and decorative cycle in the Sistine Chapel. Guest presentations will be offered from among cross-disciplinary areas such as aesthetics, history, religious studies, and political science. |
AHI 350 Impressionism and the Roots of Modernism | Impressionist paintings by artists like Monet and Renoir resonate so comfortably in modern sensibility that we may forget how revolutionary they once were. Their commitment to new subject matter and new ways of seeing qualify the Impressionists as perhaps the original avant garde in the history of Western art. This CORE II course considers the artistic antecedents to Impressionism and the social and political atmosphere in which the movement took shape through artists like Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and Berthe Morisot. Topics include the remaking of Paris by Baron von Haussmann, the politics of the Salon system, and the influence of Charles Baudelaire. The course concludes with three Post-Impressionist painters – Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Cezanne – whose work, bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is not imaginable without the innovations of Impressionism. Guest presenters in cross-disciplinary areas relevant to the course of study will be made; e.g., in aesthetics, history, psychology. |
AHI 380 Women In Art | Thirty years have passed since noted art historian Linda Nochlin asked, ¯Why have there been no great women artists? In response, this Core II course considers the role of women in art history, including Artemisia Gentilleschi, Judith Leyster, Angelica Kauffmann, Mary Cassatt, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Maya Lin. Each artist’s work is discussed in the context of aesthetics, history, politics, and economics, as well as related topics: women as subjects of art and as patrons of art. Guest presentations in relevant cross-disciplinary areas will be made. |